Research Projects

Edible Cell Scaffolds

Culturing hot dogs using plants

Rick Thyden
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States
Boston College, United States

bioreactor

cell

scaffold

Overview

Who: Rick Thyden, Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering

When: 2020 – Present

Institutes: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States; Boston College, United States

Supervisors: Glenn Gaudette, professor and chair of engineering at Boston College; Tanja Dominko, professor of biological science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Summary

Rick is developing edible plant-based scaffolds to replace synthetic, non-edible materials commonly used to culture meat. His research focuses on optimizing these scaffolds and determining the right bioreactor conditions to support cow, turkey, and rainbow trout satellite cell culture. Rick aims to culture enough cells for one 45g hotdog using his plant-based scaffolds so that his final product is fully edible.

Why This Matters

Rick’s edible scaffolds and culture system brings us closer to providing a scalable cell culture system for cultured meat. Rick estimates that to make one cell-cultured hotdog, he would need to grow a whopping 1,958,000,000 muscle cells. To grow cell culture at this scale, his research focuses on optimizing growing conditions and materials to maximize output.